I’ve been re-reading “The Satanic Bible.” As a kitten, this tome meant something completely different to me. As I’ve reviewed the book over the last week, I get this feeling in the back of my head of how 1960s it really is. And that’s evident in some of the language that Uncle Anton uses. He uses phrases that appear to be targeted at the type of individual that understands Xtian culture of the period. I could see this book being used in a college level course in the future as a tool to examine culture of that period. Actually, I would be quite surprised if there isn’t already a course that uses “The Satanic Bible.”

Overall, I feel that there is a lot of showman fluff all throughout the actual solid stuff here, which is something you need if you want to sell yourSelf or something you’re doing. It would do me a lot of good to focus on improving my own showmanship in many areas of my life. It will also come in handy as I continue to get comfortable doing tarot readings. Like using showmanship to bide time while I use my other faculties to interpret a spread. I already do this some, and maybe this is where some loose basic knowledge of astrology will be able to actually be useful.

When I look at “The Satanic Bible” from the point of view of how “showy” it is as opposed to the things Uncle Anton has written, the book becomes something else entirely. Dare I say, genius, because there’s a lot going on under the hood here. Both in actual message and presentation.

This nature of showmanship actually makes me want to scrutinize the current state of stand up comedy. Nowadays, there is no showmanship. You can dress in a t-shirt and blue jeans and go up to tell unironic jokes about the everyday. It’s become really common, even among bigger names in the industry. They want to convey a “no-bullshit let’s laugh at idiots” type of routine. And it works. It would be interesting though if someone were to come up and instead of talking about idiots, they bring the idiot to the stage. Maybe like Steve Martin or Robin Williams did in their heyday. Like an unintentional intentional funnyman as opposed the stoic “cut to the chase” pessimistic type of comedy that’s become the norm. I bet if the right person did it, in the right place, they would become huge.

Show and Tell

I can tell my audience about something until I’m blue in the face, but until I really show them that everything they thought about what I’m trying to communicate with them is congruent to what they had in mind there’s going to be some level of disconnect. I must seek to instigate a superficial moment of Synesis between mySelf and my audience. For example, I have this tool to tell you what you already know (a tarot spread), and I know that you already know it through the reactions you make to what I’m showing you. I now know what you know and reveal that “truth” objectively through speech, even though we both knew that “truth” simultaneously before it was even said.

This all goes back to the idea of being clever by making your audience feel as though they are the clever ones. If I can get them to believe that what I’m doing is their idea, I’ve not only created a sense of urgency through perceived realization in my audience, I’ve also made them feel special by making them believe that what I’m describing to them was their idea first.

Showmanship also embodies something else, mode of dress.

Suits. People don’t wear them anymore. I was watching a documentary recently about how particular James Brown was about his band’s presentation back in the 60s. If they did six shows in one day, he expected his band to have their suits cleaned and pressed before the next show. Somehow they were able to pull this off. After a time, he even expressed a no-tolerance policy to his band for not wearing a cleanly pressed suit–even on their tour bus. All of this was done as a way to aide James Brown himself and the public persona he was building up as a way to hack the system at a time where it was very difficult for a black man to move up into the upper echelons of society. In order to get what he wanted, James Brown had to give the public the idea that he was always a well-dressed man, surrounded by people of a similar demeanor.

Persona building can be aided greatly by mode of dress, it’s only a matter of finding what part you want to play.

Atmosphere is also important. For example, I find using extravagant trappings in my ritual laboratory like candles, statues, symbols, signs, and even location as tools to aide in connect with a persona capable of communicating with my NeterSelf. Subjectively speaking, the use of such “props” help to enhance the atmosphere of my ritual laboratory in such a way that the space between me and my higher Self closes ever so slightly. In writing this, I’m reminded of the movie “Arrival” (2016). If I used the scientists trying to communicate with the aliens in that movie as a model to explain my objective corporeal meat vehicle, I can use the aliens in that movie as a model for my higher Self. Neither speak the same language, but through unique invention, the scientists figure out a way to communicate with the aliens using abstract symbols. Ritual trappings are used in this same way. These types of tools can be used “on stage” as well, especially if I’m taking a job that requires creating a level of “escape” for my potential client.

It bums me out to see local fortunetellers read out on 4th avenue here in Tucson without taking into account the importance of showmanship and atmosphere. They’re usually out at every street fair we have downtown. Ragged jackets, dirty card tables, and a demeanor that makes them seem more like transients down on their luck than noble fortune tellers. It all just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Who wants to have their fortune told by someone who doesn’t even look like they know what fortune is?

Today, Dr. Michael Aquino released an interesting book–an “automobiography.” It’s entitled “Ghost Rides” and features a look back at some of the cars he came across during the adventure of his life. It features an introduction by horror author Don Webb. It can be found HERE.

The release of “Ghost Rides” has actually inspired me to write a car story of my own…here we go:

I have had cars come and go in my life, and there’s one in particular that will always “be the one” for me. My dad and I flew down to Atlanta when I was thirteen to pick up a car in northern Florida. When I first laid eyes upon this beauty of a car I knew that I would never look at another car the same way again. Behold the Camaro 1971 RS. The car needed a lot of work, not to mention a paint job (it was a vomit green color), but that didn’t matter. It was TOUGH. My dad and I drove this baby from Florida all the way back to the Northeast and along the way we had many adventures, including one evening where the power steering gave out and he had to muscle the muscle car into a gas station to figure out a solution. He went to find someone to talk to. I was left completely alone in the car, in the dark for sometime. My mind wandered into places a thirteen year old normally shouldn’t go, but I was acutely aware of problems I had with mySelf and began to speak to “Satan” openly about exactly where I wanted to be in twenty years. Some “deals” were struck, with what I would eventually reframe as my first conversation with my “NeterSelf.” This was 1997. What I said in that car and where I “drove” mySelf to in 2017 all lined up with what I said that night. And while I was far from the day where I would understand what Greater Black Magic even was, especially as a means to communicate with a part of mySelf far removed from the “world that is,” I regard this “apocryphal communication” as my first GBM working.

Within the mythology of mySelf this is the moment where my life began to get turned upside down on its head. All of this happened in the passenger seat of the sexiest car I’ve ever laid eyes on.

When we finally got home, my dad started to really work on the car a lot. He would lift weights like a beast and work on the car immediately after. I had the opportunity to help him on several occasions, even if that meant holding the light up for him to check the timing belt. My dad painted the Camaro “gun metal.” He rebuilt the engine. Completely redid the interior, black, black, black, no. 1. He put a blower in the car, and a cal induction hood on it. The car went through a total transformation, which also is quite apocryphal to me within the mythology of Me. I often wonder where I would be now if I hadn’t taken that initial “drive” on the highway of my higher Self. I digress.

My dad was planning on passing the car to me, but my parents started going through some rocky times after 9/11 and he ended up selling it to a collector in Washington state. I had a lot of good memories in the Camaro. My dad was a car nut the entire time he was around in my life and it was the one thing I always felt that I was able to bond with him on. There were certainly more muscle cars he rebuilt along the way, but our 1971 Camaro RS, was the last and most important car I’ve had the pleasure of “getting to know.”

My earliest memories hover around when I first experienced Self-awareness.

Like a cloudy dream, I remember sitting on the floor in my parents’ kitchen with a gallon of milk. I needed two hands to lift the milk out of the refrigerator. It was heavy. I put a cup down on the floor and tried lifting the gallon in order to pour it into the cup. I watched with a brief joy of the cup filling up and then the cup overflowed. Milk went everywhere. Imperfection.

I liked to dance myself silly in the living room. I would dance so hard I would give myself carpet burn on my knees and arms. I remember popping into our stereo system a clear cassette tape with James Brown’s “I Feel Good” on there. When the song was over I would get up and rewind it. I would dance and spin circles in unison to the trombones for hours.

Freedom has always tasted just like a good James Brown song. Tight, funky, far-flung, alone, and feeling good.

“He who knows (the Dao) does not (care to) speak (about it); he who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it. He (who knows it) will keep his mouth shut.” -Lao Tzu

There’s something to be said about what brings people to the point of joining the Temple of Set. Self-improvement, curiosity, material wealth, all could be possible answers. And honestly, I truly feel that the tools we have here are great at helping anyone willing to put in the work a new world filled with all three of those things. Is that all there really is though?

The nature of objectivity, at least in my estimation, is that it’s incredibly fleeting. It’s extrinsic. It’s temporary. And that fact that all of this (*slaps hands on the floor, desk, my body*) is so temporary feels like motivation enough to live the best way that I can muster while I am pinned to this physical, temporary, and fragile reality. Death drives humanity. It’s a great unknown in the scope of everything we seem to think. To me, My big Truth lies NOT in objectivity. The ironic thing about death and the Lao Tzu quote starts with the opening line “he who knows does not speak.” It reminds me of one of William Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell”:

“The dead body revenges not injuries.”

The dead understand the nature of death and yet they cannot speak about it because they have fallen away from all of this—they could also care less about the body they lived in their whole objective lives because there’s an illusory quality to objectivity that I feel is discounted by some of what the basic “fast and dirty” superficial and surface level LHP philosophy has to say regarding the “Truth.”

I know what you’re thinking….

“Nikoletta, would you call getting punched in the face an illusion?”

Speaking from experience, I’ve been punched in the face quite a bit, so I’ll offer my perspective to further clarify where I’m coming from:

No, getting punched in the face is not an illusion. Traumatic physical events can do real damage to the subjective, “real” Self. Especially so when I forget that I shouldn’t get too attached to my body since I’m not going to be in it for long. Getting punched in the face is also bad because it’s has the potential to physically damage the tool in which I use to expand my subjective Self—my objective body.

The terms subjective and objective are tossed around a lot, but they really boil down to what “is” and “isn’t.” And ultimately, in my cosmology, I’m trying to reconcile the usefulness of using either term. The lines of what is and what isn’t often seem to be flipped and interwoven much more than I initially thought. A lot of times, subjectivity seems much more real because damage done to it can’t be healed without a perspective shift. And that requires, at times, making conscious choices that our physical bodies will rebel against. That doesn’t mean denying the body pleasure. But rebellion isn’t as simple as wearing a short skirt even though your dad hates the idea. Rebellion, in my world, lies in the understanding that I can pull mySelf away from automatic behaviors that are comfortable (both physical and mental) through the adept manipulation of my subjective perceptions. Do you think Set slays Apep the same exact way every night? The slice to the jugular isn’t so exciting after you do it over and over again.

When I’m in doubt, I usually find it helpful to just take a good, hard, long look at my Pentagram of Set and muse over the implications that symbol has to my life—both superficially and on an entirely different level that doesn’t cross paths with that superficial objective illusion. Objectivity, has the potential to fool my true Self through the biologically driven ego (that is NOT the Self) into wanting to stay attached to the things that have defined me through the experience of being human. My NeterSelf isn’t concerned with all of this (*waves hands around*) but it/she/him can get caught up in the irrelevant if I give into the things I really don’t want, even though my body might. To quote Blake again—“He who restrains desire does so because his weak enough to be restrained.” I desire to be more than what I am. And if that means making an effort to exercise, and eat as clean as I can afford to, or confront my bad habits, I’m going to do that. Indulgence can go to the over the top extreme of the Duc in “120 Days of Sodom” aka the way of the Libertine, or you can indulge your higher Self in creating habits and lifestyle choices that will make you happier in the long run. Of course, these are all my interpretations.

We all need to create our own cosmology. The tools are all here to make that happen.

The “existence” of Set question is hard. It’s a disservice to mySelf to try and pin down what Set, is, wants, did, etc. All of that is hogwash created by my mind to try and justify the unknown in terms of what it means to be human. I don’t like thinking about Set as the one that gave me his “gift” because, to me, that notion alone is very un-Set like. Set isn’t an immovable mover. Set is the active springing of energy.

ALL OF THAT SAID…

If I were to attempt to personify Set in a limited human sense I would say it like this:

Set is a neter of war, nightmares, conflict, storms, and all around assholery. He doesn’t have time to take pity on a bunch of hairless apes by giving them a gift. The only way that would occur is if those apes were like a giant red button and he just wanted to see what would happen should he press it. Set is chaotic neutral. He might save your life. He might also steal your car. He doesn’t want adherents—unlike other neter. The sha, or Set animal is allegedly imaginary. Imagination is weird. Set is weird. (Set is also Wryd). Humans also have the potential to be weird in the same way. Maybe that’s another reason why I’m here in the Temple of Set—to learn the Weirding (Wyrding) ways like any Self-respecting Bene Gesserit would….

Because, I mean, if we wanna get real serious here all the big life questions usually all circle back to Dune anyway…Star Wars ripped it off, so I guess it’s good enough for me to rip off as well. Of course I’m being facetious, but you should read Dune if you haven’t. Initiatory tools that are also entertainment are hard to resist recommending.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” -Paul Atreides, Dune

Since this is the traditional season for failing New Year’s Eve resolutions, I thought I’d write a few words about this. It should be very simple in theory: Don’t do the thing that harms us or gives unwanted results. Or: do the thing that gives us what we want.

Beginning anything at all is easy, keeping at it is the difficult part. No matter whether it is something entirely new or something you have done earlier. That you once were a nonsmoker doesn’t help you stop smoking.

Aiming too high at first can be a problem, but if you don’t it is easy to be disheartened by how low the realistic goal seems. The reason the goals we set often have to be low is that making the change itself is often the most difficult thing at all.